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Facing stiff competition from Google Microsoft has decided to provide end users with a free version of Microsoft Office called Microsoft Office Lite. As most of you might be knowing, Google's increasing popularity in providing users with Google Docs and now promising to put out its own operating system for desktop computers very soon . In a step to deal with this competition, Microsoft. will be releasing Office Lite which will be the same look and feel as upcoming Office 2010. The suite will include a Word processor, Spread sheeting program and a presentation program

The Office Lite version will be a web based version of the Office suite with scaled down features and will become available sometime in mid next year. However, it will provide enough capability to a normal user to be able to have the same basic features of the normal Office 2007 or 2010 applications. Analyst are saying that this free version of Microsoft Office Lite will hurt Microsoft in profit revenues, as Microsoft Office is Microsoft's biggest money making unit.

One of the ways that Microsoft plans to make money of this free suite is through ad revenues, coming as a result of users using the web based product, however this still may not be enough, so the business plan also includes two other versions of the Office Suite which will be more sophisticated, but will be designed primarily for businesses.

In a way, companies like Google are finally promoting healthy competition that are forcing giants like Microsoft to break their price monopoly and making products available for either lower price or now for free. A few years back, such a product offering from Microsoft was unimaginable.